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UP AND COMING: Brendan Fraser; A Man Schooled for Success

By JAMIE DIAMOND;

Published: June 21, 1992

LOS ANGELES—
ONCE UPON A TIME, IN January 1991, a 21-year-old named Brendan Fraser, who had one line in an unreleased film, borrowed his mother's Chevrolet Spectrum and drove from Seattle to Hollywood. On the morning of his arrival, he went to an office on Hollywood and Vine to meet the director Taylor Hackford.

In this fairy tale, the unknown actor didn't get the part. Instead, over the next 18 months, Brendan Fraser made a television pilot; he starred in a television movie opposite Martin Sheen; and he won the leads in two major feature films. In one, the just-released "Encino Man," Mr. Fraser portrays the lovable caveman Link, who is found frozen by two teen-agers, is thawed out and becomes a hip, skateboarding California high school student. In the fall release "School Ties," he plays David Greene, a young football player who hides his Judaism when he gets a scholarship to an anti-Semitic prep school.

Was the Chevy Spectrum pumpkin-colored?

"I guess I got lucky," Mr. Fraser says in an apologetic tone. "Some sort of buzz occurred. Today, people look at me differently. As if I have the Light, or someone told me the secret. How to."

Sherry Lansing, the producer of "School Ties," remembers: "We were less than four weeks away from principal photography, and we still didn't have the boy. Brendan came into the room, very shy. We said: 'Here are three scenes. Read.' And suddenly his stance changes. And this person emerges whom you can't take your eyes off. He's like all the good ones. They become the person."

Did the speedy ascent overwhelm Mr. Fraser?

Green eyes seeking purchase on the ground, he says, "I didn't have time to think about it." Pause. "I figure it could have overwhelmed me." Pause. "I kind of had a miniature nervous breakdown."

Brendan James Fraser, the youngest of four sons of a Canadian foreign service officer, was raised in Europe, the United States and Canada, attended a Montessori school in Detroit and the Sacred Heart School in Bellevue, Wash., learned French in Ottawa and Dutch in The Hague, went to boarding school in Toronto and finished up at the Actors' Conservatory at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.

Obviously he had no firsthand experience at being Cro-Magnon Rasta valley dude or an inwardly tortured Jewish quarterback. But for his role in "School Ties," Mr. Fraser did have something to draw on: boarding school. "The way my school was run, like a miniature corporation, was horrifying," he says. "I didn't fit in. They encouraged tremendous rivalry between different houses. We were like gang members in suits and ties." That's why making "School Ties" was so important for him.

"I had to do this project because it would help exorcise some of the ghosts that lingered from boarding school. And my memories were rekindled when I was on location in those hallowed halls with plaques all over the place and those well-dressed, good-looking men walking around who were supposed to be the future of the world. Boarding school is creepy and seductive all at the same time. I never felt that I had a grip on it. But this role gave me another crack at it, and I got the opportunity to re-examine my past."

Mr. Fraser, who was singled out for his exuberant physical performance in otherwise lukewarm reviews for "Encino Man," sits motionless, looking at the floor, the picture of a schoolboy kept after class by the headmaster. He says he has always wanted to be an actor and wanted to put on plays with his friends.

"All kids do that," he says. Yes, but what made Mr. Fraser continue into adulthood? Still looking at the floor, he smiles and says softly, "There's a reason why it's called a play."